INTERESTING AFRICAN PAPILIO ABERRATION ON EBAY

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Papilio-zalmoxis-ABERRATION-SET-x-1-A1-Tropical-Butterfly-/260923915943?pt=UK_Collectables_AnimalCollectables_SM&hash=item3cc046fea7

THE STATE OF UK BUTTERFLIES 2011

Today sees the publication of Butterfly Conservation's The State of the UK's Butterflies 2011 (which can be downloaded from this link). The report shows that almost three quarters of UK butterfly species have decreased in population during the last decade. More specifically, the findings by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) show that 72% of species declined in abundance over ten years and distributions of 54% of butterflies fell, many sharply. The report comes from data gathered by two long-running citizen science projects - the Butterflies for the New Millennium (BNM) recording scheme and the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. Click here to see the full list of winners and losers.

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/pressrelease_2011status.php

LONG-TAILED BLUE IN THE UK

One of the rarest British butterfly migrants has been seen at least twice this year - both times in the last couple of weeks - once in the Scilly Isles and once in Dorset. Does anyone know of any other records?

A RARE VISIT FROM ROYALTY

The first UK Monarch butterfly of the year...

Image Source

A new abberation of the purple emperor

http://www.thepurpleempire.com/Dennis%20abberation.html

MEET MY OLD LADY

Back when I was a boy and used to collect moths, one of the prized items in my collection was the forewing of a moth called Mormo maura - The Old Lady. I read about it in The Observer's Book of Larger British Moths which my long-dead Uncle Tim gave me for my 8th birthday, and I always rather wanted to meet one in the flesh so to speak.

When I first got the book I was a schoolboy in Hong Kong, and despite being surrounded with a dazzling panoply of exotic species I read and re-read the book Uncle Tim had given me, and memorised many of the species.

In 1973 (by which time we were back in England) we went on a family walk to Bucks Mills, and there, on the corner of the last house before the twisty little path down to the beach I found a huge spider's web, and in the web was the front wing of one of these moths.

And until last night, I never saw hide nor hair (OK moths have neither hide nor hair, but you know what I mean) of this species again.

But last night, to paraphrase Sir Paul McC an old lady came in through the bathroom window.



My days of moth collecting except in pictures are long gone, so I called Corinna, we both photographed the venerable she-moth and I released her out into the night.





It is nice when - a week before one's 52nd birthday - one gets to realise a lifelong ambition, albeit a minor one.






Thanks Uncle Tim.
































http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=2300

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JON DOWNES: Another Comeback?

I have always maintained that despite the views of many people in and outside the cryptozoological community, cryptozoology is not synonymous with the hunt for monsters. As Bernard Heuvelmans said in volume one of the journal Cryptozoology the discipline he codified was the study of unexpected animals. And an unexpected animal has turned up three times this year in my old stomping ground of Dawlish Warren.

Back when I was a student in the early 1980s I lived in the Staff Accomopdation at Langdon Hospital just outside Dawlish in South Devon, and so between 1982-5 I spent every summer out and about in the area. One of my favourite locations was Dawlish Warren Nature Reserve. Its website describes it thus:

'Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve, Devon is located on a long sand spit at the mouth of the River Exe. The sand spit is home to many species of wildlife and holds geomorphologic interest. Habitats at the Warren, include dunes, grassland, ponds, salt marsh and mudflats. The Warren is also the main roost for wildfowl and wading birds of the Exe Estuary.'

This is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn’t even approach an encapsulation of the genius loci of this magickal place. In the middle of a slightly down-at-heel tourist area it is an oasis of wild beauty. As a student I used to go there to watch the oyster-catchers who congregated (and prersumably still congregate) in enormous numbers on the edge of the estuary, and occasionally one would get a glimpse of a sand lizard, those beautiful and ridiculously rare little reptiles that were once almost extinct in this country.

But now there is another ridiculously rare creature, and what is more important is that it appears to be making some sort of a comeback.

The large tortoiseshell (Nymphalis polychloros) was once a common British species. In Victorian times, according to the excellent UK Butterflies website, 'the Large Tortoiseshell was considered widespread and common in woodland in southern England. However, this beautiful insect has since suffered a severe decline and there have been less than 150 records since 1951. This butterfly, whose numbers were always known to fluctuate, is generally considered to be extinct in the British Isles, with any sightings considered to be migrants from the continent or accidental or deliberate releases of captive-bred stock. Several causes of its decline have been suggested - including climate change, parasitism, and the effect of Dutch Elm disease on one of its primary foodplants. The hope, of course, is that this butterfly is able to once again colonise our islands'.
Adrian Hoskins writes that for some unknown reason (and he suggests that it is unlikely to have been parasitism) the species declined massively in the early part of the 20th Century, and although it was quite widespread again in the 1940s, never really recovered. Interestingly, his dates are different to those given elsewhere, saying that it became rare in the 1970s and was extinct by 1990. http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/Britain%20-%20Nymphalis%20polychloros.htm

He goes on to suggest that it was the arrival of Dutch Elm disease that finally delivered the coup de grace to this beautiful insect, something upon which most authorities seem to agree.
The other day, whilst I was doing something completely different, I came across a report that 'A Large Tortoiseshell, only the third site record, was in the Buffer Zone' on the 23rd March. It was seen again in early April.



Incredibly excited, I looked around for the other two records and found that they had occurred in 2007 and 2008, but as I cast my net wider, it turned out that despite having been probably extinct in the UK since 1953 and declared so in 1983, these elusive butterflies are quite often seen in Devon.

Look at these reports from http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/:

Reported sightings of the Large Tortoiseshell in Britain during 2007:
14-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen Brownsea Island Dorset.
14-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Gosport and Stokes Bay Golf Course (Grid Ref: SZ613981).
14-07-07 - Two probable Large Tortoiseshell seen at Gosport and Stokes Bay Golf Course (Grid Ref: SZ606978).
10-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Shortwood Common Devon (Grid Ref: SY849052).
09-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in the grounds of Bicton College, Devon.
09-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen Brownsea Island, Dorset.
08-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen Tout Quarry, Portland, Dorset.
07-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in Clanfield, north of Waterlooville, Hampshire.
07-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in Church Knowle, Dorset.
07-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in Arne, Dorset.
06-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Peak Hill, Sidmouth, Devon (Grid Ref: SY114869).
05-07-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in the New Forest, Hampshire.
29-06-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Shortwood Common, Budleigh Salterton, Devon (Grid Ref: SY849052).
29-06-07 - Large Tortoiseshell at Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex.
26-06-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Littlehampton Bridge, Sussex.
20-06-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Musbury Castle, Devon (Grid Ref: SY289939).
21-06-07 - Large Tortoiseshell at Crouch Gardens, Seaford, Sussex.
04-05-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in a garden in Lydd-on-Sea, Kent.
06-04-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen in Portland Bill flying in from sea.
03-04-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen near Sugarloaf Hill, Kent.
03-03-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Portland Bird Observatory, Dorset.
27-01-07 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Portland Bird Observatory, Dorset.

Reported sightings of the Large Tortoiseshell in Britain during 2006:
05-05-06 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Aylesbeare, Devon.
05-05-06 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Branksome Dene Chine, Poole, Dorset.
05-05-06 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Boscombe Cliffs, Bournemouth, Dorset.
08-04-06 - Large Tortoiseshell seen at Worth Matravers, Dorset.

The website goes on to say:

'Due to unofficial or accidental releases by butterfly breeders who import eggs and larvae from dealers from outside the UK, it is impossible to tell at present if there are self sustaining breeding colonies present in Britain or if the reported sightings are of released captive bred individuals. Sadly this practice makes the possible conservation of this species if if does persist in very low numbers very difficult and understanding the true nature of the distribution and habitat requirements of the Large Tortoiseshell in the UK almost impossible. Some sightings are also thought to be of naturally occuring migrants from mainland Europe.'

This is quite possibly true but if so, it would suggest that there are no amateur lepidopterists living outside the south coast of the UK, which is where all the reports are from, and it ignores the fact that in 2008, no less a personage than the head Wildlife Officer of the National Trust wrote in 2009:

'The Large Tortoiseshell butterfly, which was thought to be extinct in the UK, has bred successfully on National Trust land in south Devon, with other sightings recorded along the south coast of England'.

Writing on his invaluable ‘Learn about Butterflies’ website, Adrian Hoskins says:

'In June and July 2007 several fresh specimens were recorded at various locations on the Isle of Wight and scattered along several miles of the Hampshire coastline. Records of worn specimens from other coastal sites every spring from 2007 to 2010 appears to indicate that the butterfly might now be breeding regularly but in very low numbers in southern Hampshire or on the Isle of Wight. On the other and it is equally likely that one or more amateur enthusiasts are releasing captive-bred European livestock of this butterfly breeder's favourite in an attempt to re-establish the species in Britain.'

So is it extinct or not? The available evidence would tend to suggest probably not, and that as well as the hypothesised breeding populations in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it is slowly colonising the south coast of Devon and Dorset. This is particularly interesting because, as has already been mentioned, when it was a well known British resident, it was best known from the southeast and the midlands.

Once again this provides an object lesson as to the veracity of Heuvelmans’s maxim that there are indeed lost worlds everywhere. Whilst there are undoubtedly new species to discover in far flung corners of the globe, the recent rediscovery of the English pine marten, green lizards in Dorset, the pool frog as a British species and now the apparent renaissance of the large tortoiseshell, would suggest that our knowledge of our own native wildlife is far from complete.

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RICHARD MUIRHEAD SENT THIS FROM THE LATEST EDITION OF THE 'BUTTERFLY CONSERVATION' MAGAZINE

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THE WOOLSERY BUTTERFLY COUNT - THE PLOT THICKENS

Max and I went out for an hour or so yesterday afternoon, and following the same route as yesterday, we again saw ten species - two of them being different to the ones we saw the day before. The two new ones being Peacock (Inachis io) and Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus).

We also saw two remarkably small orange tips in one specific location. I am interested to find out whether this is a localised race, or whether they are caused by lack of foodstuffs during the larval stage. The fact that they did not appear to be weak and were flying alongside normal-sized specimens would tend to negate that theory. Any ideas?

This actually brings the species tally to 12 in 48 hours. When you think that there have only been 23 species recorded in Woolsery and the surrounding areas (by me as a youngster, and various CFZ bods in the past six years) and there are only 35 species that even might be in the area according to UK Butterflies who are pretty damned authoratative. We have therefore discounted ridiculously rare and local species, species that only live in Scotland, the Isle of Wight or chalky downs for example, and also the stupidly rare migrants.

An awful lot of my energies over the past twenty-five years, since I first started taking my cryptozoological studies seriously, has been about fluctuations in the species lists of various biotopes where there are thought to be creatures of cryptozoological interest. Some years ago I published my preliminary thoughts about the fluctuating mammal species lists of Hong Kong - an area with more than its fair share of intersesting creatures.

Now, it is about time that I turned the spotlight onto my own figurative doorstep.

The area that I have chosen as our study area is basically the area over which I used to roam between 1971 and 1981 (when I finally left home). In the last few years we have highlighted it as being an area in which at least three creatures of interest to us live: golden frogs, wild boar and big cats.

Butterfly numbers are markedly down on what they were thirty years ago, with one exception: the migratory nymphalids are far more common. However, our efforts over the past few days have proved that all the species I knew here as a child have survived. The one exception to this is the marbled white (Melanargia galathea), which will not fly until July, and which had a very localised range. We will look for it again then.

This year is an extraordinary one so far for butterflies, and I hope that it will continue to be so. I have a sneaking suspicion that once we can point our sticky little fingers at the cause of these odd fluctuations we will not only have learned more about British butterflies than we did, but also be in possesion of some truths of great importance to Fortean Zoology as a whole.

THE BIG BUTTERFLY HUNT

Regular readers will remember that the other day Graham and I went in search of orange tips - a butterfly species that I hadn't seen in Woolsery for over thirty years. The only specimens that we found were males, and so yesterday Max and I went to see if we could redress the balance. As you can see by the image above left, we did. By the way, all butterflies were released after we filmed/photographed them.

But there was more excitement in store. There were two other species that I had seen in Woolsery as a child, but that were apparently missing when I returned as an adult. These were the Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) and the Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas). In one afternoon we saw both species. I had last seen G.rhamni in Woolsery in 1972 and L.phlaeas in 1981.

I am not claiming that any of these three species have not appeared in Woolsery in the interim, but only that I have not seen them, and that they have not been reported to me by any of my Natural History spies, like the Rev. Gerald Smith (Retd) who is a tireless photographer of all things great and small in the village and the surrounding areas.

In all, Max and I saw at least 11 species (there were two others that we were not able to identify) in the village yesterday, which considering there have only been 23 species recorded by us since 1971, is not too bad at all. This year is shaping up to be a very exciting one butterfly-wise.

NB: Richard Muirhead writes: 'The relevant sentence in today`s Guardian Country Diary from St Dominic, Tamar Valley is; “Orange-tip butterflies flit across sweet vernal, the coarser grasses, nettles, flowering plantains and patches of lady`s smock…” This is at Sullens Wood.' It seems a bumper year for orange tips everywhere.

ON THE TRACK OF UNKNOWN...

Yesterday Graham and I went in search of an animal not seen in our part of North Devon for over thirty years. Like so many cryptozoological creatures, it is ethno-known, and our search was triggered by a chance encounter that a visiting fortean had with one of these animals.

Graham and I finally ran it down after an exciting car chase down twisting lanes, and we have conclusive proof of its existence.

I lived in Woolsery between 1971 and 1981, and most springtimes I would get on my bicycle and go up to the edges of Huddisford Woods (yes; the place where we got the big cat hairs last year), and look at the orange tips.

Anthocharis cardamines is one of my favourite British butterflies, probably because it reminds me of my favourite butterfly from my childhood in Hong Kong. However, for some reason or another, they were never common in Woolsery, and began to die out in about 1977, and by the beginning of the decade that taste forgot, they had vanished.

At the weekend Dawn Holloway of the Haunted Skies Project told me how common they were this year in her back garden in Redditch, and I bemoaned the fact that I had not seen them in Woolsery for many a year. I even told her that each year I drove up to the borders of Huddisford Wood looking for them, to no avail.

The next day (with a slightly `I told you so` look in her eyes LOL) she told me that there were plenty of them along the lane from the campsite at Ashcroft Farm to Huddisford. So today Graham and I went looking for them, and we saw five or six males. We followed one along one of the lanes, and were surprised to see it travel for over half a mile without any seeming signs of exhaustion.

We later saw another three males at another location (Kennerland Cross) where I had never seen them before. The species is certainly back, and in some numbers. We shall be going back there tomorrow to see if we can ascertain how many of the `white` butterflies that we also saw were this species rather than green-veined, large, or small whites (P.napi, P brassica, and P.rapae). Watch this space....

BUTTERFLIES ON THE BEEB

You all know about my obsession with butterflies. According to the BBC's Natural World programme, kindly sent to me by Richard Freeman, they are a British obsession. You only have four days left to watch it so....

Check it out on I-Player

THE LAST BATCH OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE INDIAN EXPEDITION... FOR NOW

Shireng R Marak, a two-thumbed village elder,

who heard the mande-barung's cry and was chased into a cave by it.

A swarm of yellow butterflies near the jungle stream at Imangri

A simulacrum of a huge footprint in limestone near a stream some miles from Imangri,

not to be confused with the real thing.

A dead whit- lipped tree viper we found in the jungle.

Jon fishing for a tarantula in a hole in the wall outside our lodge.

JON DOWNES: Dragonfly Swarms

Regular readers of my bumblings will know several things about me, most notably that I was brought up in Hong Kong where I first got my love for the natural world. They also might know that I have been working with my childhood friend Richard Muirhead on a book about the mystery animals of Hong Kong in a desultory sort of way for many years now, and as part of my ongoing research for this project, which will eventually reach fruition (honest) I subscribe to an internet newsgroup called Old Hong Kong, which occasionally does what it says on the tin and sends me photographs of Hong Kong in the years between the wars, and the post-war years before it became the unbridled mouthpiece of lassaiz faire (and non-lassaiz faire) capitalism, and was still a bastion of colonial architecture, and – possibly even more important – colonial values.

Sadly, most of the time the old Hong Kong newsgroup just sends out up to forty invitations to invest in the foreign exchange market, buy Viagra, or look at amusingly illiterate but semi-graphic pornography, which is mildly embarrassing when someone is looking over my shoulder as I do my emails. However, I continue to subscribe to the newsgroup and despite the unkind slurs from my friends and co-workers, not to mention my nearest and dearest, it is not because of emails from people like XxX Dubai Aunties XxX with titles such as [old_hongkong] 18+ Compilation of Girls with Niplslipz and [old_hongkong] ..:: $ex with Asian women in Australia ::.., but because occasionally I get a gem.

Like this one.

In amongst all the unwanted, though mildly amusing rubbish, was one called [old_hongkong] When Insect Attack what Happen, which included this picture which to many people probably looks like a badly photoshopped excerpt from a third rate horror movie, but brought back vivid memories of some encounters from my childhood that I had completely forgotten.

Between the years of 1966 and 1970 I attended Peak School, which surprisingly still exists at Plunkett’s Road, The Peak, and on several occasions (my brain is trying to say that this happened every summer but this is, to be honest, just wishful thinking) there were enormous swarms of dragonflies, which terrorised children at the school. When I say swarms, I am talking of an obscene mass of insects, tens or even hundreds of thousands strong, which appeared to have forgotten the typical good-mannered hunting strategies common to the Odonata and flew willy-nilly into each other, into walls, and into the faces of the terrified children.

From memory, they were an orange/brown colour, which corresponds well with Pantala flavescens, which is, according to none other than James Tutt – one of the founding fathers of modern entomology (cited by Wikipedia) – the most widespread dragonfly on the planet. It is also (again, according toWikipedia) known in Hong Kong as the typhoon dragonfly as it arrives with or shortly before the seasonal rain.

A brief look at Google indicates that these swarms still take place. According to one couple writing on their religious-themed blog http://everydayadventuresinfaith.blogspot.com/2009/07/dance-of-dragonflies.html

they do indeed swarm just before the typhoon:

“he most fascinating signal of the approaching storm was the dance of the dragonflies. As the barometric pressure changed yesterday, the dragonflies came out in swarms. As a creature of the wind and water, in the Chinese culture the dragonfly symbolizes change. Its iridescent wings are incredibly sensitive to the slightest breeze, and so we are reminded by their "dance" to heed where the proverbial winds blow lest we run into stormy weather.”

They then decided to quote from Psalm 107:28-30:


“When they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,and he guided them to their desired haven.”


Which is all very well, but I have to say that I don’t see the relevance.

If indeed the insects that I encountered as a child were Pantala flavescens then the fact that they migrate to the former British colony does solve one of the conundra that have been mildly bugging me for the last four and a half decades.

You see, the dragonflies weren’t the only species of tropical insect who – at least in the days when I lived in Hong Kong – were wont to swarm. Flying ants, termites, small beetles, aphids and various types of Lepidoptera swarmed fairly regularly. It was only the latter that were quite as spectacular as the dragonflies. I remember in 1970 when there was a magnificent glut of silkmoths – probably Cynthia moths Samia cynthia. Herklots, in his seminal work The Hong Kong Countryside (1951), notes on page 69 that three different species of the Danainae or monarch butterflies were also known to swarm in the winter months in Hong Kong. I recall also seeing a swarm several-thousand-strong of a yellow and black butterfly that forty-five years later I am completely unable to identify. However, the swarms of these other insects were all caused by mass emergences from the larval state. One used to see the adults in the process of emerging from their chrysalides, or – in the case of termites or flying ants – emerging in the tens of thousands from their communal homes.

Even as child I was aware that dragonflies emerged into adulthood after a protracted adolescence as aquatic nymphs. Indeed, I kept the nymphs of several species in my various makeshift aquaria on my bedroom windowsill and once or twice even managed to rear them to adulthood. I had always imagined that these obscene and completely daunting swarms of dragonflies terrorising the neighbourhood for more than a day had all emerged from their nymphal state at the same time. But how could they? There were very few ponds and streams on that part of Hong Kong island, and I was very familiar with the inhabitants of most of them. Sure, there were usually one or two dragonfly larvae to be seen but nothing even approaching the amount of biomass it would have taken to produce these immense swarms, which were like something from the imagination of Clark Ashton Smith.

I decided this afternoon, once the subject had come back into my head after a gap of (terrifyingly) nearly half a century, to look up the causes of dragonfly swarms. Google prodded me towards a blog called http://dragonflywoman.wordpress.com/.

She informed me that there are two known types of swarming behaviour:

• The first are – as alluded to above – migratory swarms which she describes as “effectively rivers of hundreds of thousands of dragonflies all flying in a different direction and covering large distances.” She says that these swarms are like bird migrations or the migrations of monarch butterflies, ie a large number of individuals travelling together between habitats and usually made up of a single species. As far as I can remember, all these insects were of the same species, however Christine L. Goforth, who is the dragonfly woman, says that one of the diagnostic characteristics of this type of swarm is that they “move very quickly and may appear and disappear in a matter of minutes”. She also says that the dragonflies in this type of swarm typically follow significant waterways and fly high above the ground.


• The second type of swarm identified by Ms. Goforth is the static swarm. “These swarms contain far fewer individuals than migratory swarms (twenty to one thousand instead of tens of hundreds of thousands) and are highly localised. Individuals in the swarm will remain restricted to a very small area (like one field, or yard, or hill) and fly in a circular or figure of eight pattern about one to twenty feet off the ground, usually over a grassy area.” She goes on to say that these are feeding swarms and may contain one or several species of dragonflies in equal proportions.
  
  

Neither of these descriptions actually tick all the boxes. Although the characteristics of the swarms I encountered as a child were far more likely ‘static swarms’, and indeed they were usually congregated with their epicentre around a grassy area (either the playing field at Peak School or the grassy playground that apparently still exists at Mount Austin). These were in enormous numbers, and despite the fact that I (alone amongst my terrified compadres) found these swarms fascinating and did my best to observe and interact with the wallages of insects, I have no memory ever of seeing any of them hunting or eating their prey. I remember this with a fair degree of certainty because on other occasions I used to watch Anaciaeschna jaspidea, the common evening hawker, or the glorious Anax immaculifrons hunting and eating its prey and I was very aware of the hunting strategies of the Odonata.

I am only too aware of the fact that dragonfly woman is writing nearly half a century after my experiences, and that times have changed for invertebrates (as they have changed for all of us) in the intervening years. For example, I remember in 1971 catching, marking and releasing nearly 400 specimens of the two cabbage whites Pieris brassicae and P. rapae simply in one day within the confines of my garden here in North Devon and the garden of Well Cottage next door. These days one is lucky to see three or four in a day. So to the photograph sent to me in a parcel of soft pornography proving that my memory is not defective, what actually were these dragonfly swarms on Victory Peak, Hong Kong island, during the years when my contemporaries back in Blighty were experiencing the Swinging Sixties?

In Canada in 1979 I witnessed the beginning of the migration of monarch butterflies Danaus plexippus and the sheer biomass of hundreds of thousands of insects was an awesome sight that has stayed with me ever since. However, I wondered then as I wonder now, exactly where this huge number of butterflies had come from. I had been in my little suburb of Toronto all summer, and had seen the unmistakable caterpillars on milkweed plants quite commonly. But the caterpillars weren’t there in their millions. I wondered then whether certain areas, and indeed certain trees, were for some reason obvious to the orange and black patterned insects, but obscure to the amateur naturalist intent on grokking this entomological experience in its fullness – designated muster points from whence the horde of butterflies could, once whatever biological trigger was necessary, fly thousands of miles down to Mexico.

I wonder whether, rather than a large swarm of migrating insects having arrived in Hong Kong just before a typhoon, the opposite could have taken place. Perhaps individual specimens of Pantala flavescens from all over the former British colony, the former Portuguese colony of Macau and quite probably large chunks of Guangdong Province, had gathered together on Victoria Peak, using it as a sort of departure lounge before – with the typhoon as its impetus – beginning an enormous migration which could take them half way across Asia.

LET THE TIGERS BREAK FREE

I would like to draw readers' attention to the results of the big butterfly count. ...

Interesting results include an impressive number of sightings of the Small Tortoiseshell. This beautiful butterfly has been ravaged in recent years, with numbers declining by 82% in southeast England, perhaps due to the arrival of a parasitic fly called Sturmia bella. The big butterfly count results indicate strong signs of recovery. The Small Tortoiseshell was the ninth commonest butterfly seen across the UK and did even better in garden habitats.

http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=2274

However, welcome as that news is, the most interesting news can be found here. It appears that the Jersey Tiger, for years one of Britain's rarest and most localised moths, being restricted to parts of the southwest (including, interestingly, the Housing Estate where the CFZ lived for 20 years until 2005, and where Olivia and Ivan live now, has spread massively, being found in London of all places.

BUTTERFLY IDENTIFICATION SERVICE

We don't usually post unsolicited adverts, but I saw this in the latest issue of the Entomological Livestock Group, and I was so interested that I decided to share it.

WORLD BUTTERFLY IDENTIFICATION SERVICE - I have 40+ years field experience worldwide, an extensive library of books covering virtually all butterfly species worldwide, and
personal contacts in museums and entomological societies worldwide. Just send photos ( one per message ), with details of habitat and location. I'll notify you as soon as the species is identified, and request my fee of £10 per species, which is payable via PayPal or secure credit card. As soon
as your payment registers in my account I send you the full species name, with current nomenclature verified. In the unlikely event that I can't ID your species, no fee will be payable. Adrian Hoskins - adrianhoskins@hotmail.co.uk - http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/

NOT MY BLACK SWALLOWTAIL

From the latest edition of the Entomological Livestock Group newsletter, a letter from veteran British entomologist Brian Gardiner:

On E-bay in January appeared an offering of "British Swallowtail. P. machaon Britannicus, Black Ab." which had a data Tag "Cambridge 1968, B.O.C. Gardiner. I can categorically state that I never bred or possessed this specimen which from the accompanying photograph appears to be the North American Papilio polyxenus. When I did breed P. machaon, for release onto Wicken Fen in the 1950`s (see The Countryman 1960 vol 57 pp 294-298) all retained reference specimens would have the label `ex Norfolk stock.’ so I suspect the 1968 Cambridge label has been taken from one of my many hundreds of P. brassicae specimens which I widely distributed and would have had a Cambridge label.

The specimen in question was offered by mustavit-2007 with the item number 380196740377 and is still view-able for anyone to take a look on Ebay. The specimen sold for £255 which I think is a lot for what I think is a common American Swallowtail! There have recently been a
number of lepidoptera on Ebay with some dubious attributions, with the data labels, like mine, not being recognised as attributed to the specimen in question, so it is a case of ‘caveat emptor’ if you fancy any of them. Brian O. C. Gardiner.

MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: Two broods for Duke

Richard Muirhead is an old friend of the CFZ. I have been friends with him for 40 years now, since we were kids together in Hong Kong. He is undoubtedly one of the two best researchers I have ever met; he and Nigel Wright both have what Charlie Fort would have no doubt called a wild talent; a talent for going into a library, unearthing a stack of old newspapers, and coming back with some hitherto overlooked gem of arcane knowledge.
Dear folks,

There has been good news in today`s media about the Duke of Burgundy butterfly.

In today`s (August 19th) Guardian, headlined `Butterfly lovers hail Duke of Burgundy`s second coming` the following story appeared:

"One of the most endangered butterflies in Britain has reappeared for a second generation this summer for only the third time in more than a century. The short-lived Duke of Burgundy usually appears only in spring but a second brood is now flying at Rodborough Common, Gloucestershire, the furthest north a second generation has ever been recorded...." This is a really significant moment for one of the Duke of Burgundy strongholds. Second broods for this splendid butterfly are fairly common in southern Europe but extremely rare in the U.K.." Oates said [Matthew Oates, conservation adviser for the National Trust]...

Originally called Mr Vernon`s Small Fritillary, the Duke of Burgundy was driven to extinction in most of Britain`s native woodlands; the loss of traditional grazing accelerated its decline...Its suprise appearance demonstrated its adaptability, which is encouraging, he [Oates] added.

PURPLE EMPEROR COLONY IN SUFFOLK

From today's Entomological Livestock Group [ELG] Newsletter:

JOHN QUINN: Hopefully members will be pleased if not thrilled to know that the Suffolk Purple Emperor colony that John Quinn started has had an exceptionally good year with a maximum number of 6 seen flying at any one time (July 10th). Furthermore, 2 males have also been observed and photographed over the course of several days from the canopy tree hide a few miles down the road at the RSPB Minsmere bird reserve.

Minsmere has a lot of the larval foodplants, Broad and Narrow-leaved Sallow, much of it at
sea level and exposed to very cold Winter winds. It will be interesting therefore to see in future years whether these males are part of a group now forming a new colony or whether they are just wandering males. John's colony is probably the most easterly one in the British Isles and has attracted much comment in the butterfly and birding world.

Rob Parker, Suffolk butterfly recorder commented in a recent update on the Suffok -nh web: "...for the benefit of any other intending visitors, that A. iris survives is perhaps the best memorial to John Quinn."

According to 'The Butterflies of Suffolk an Atlas & History', by Mendel and Piotrowski, the last Purple Emperor recorded in Suffolk was in 1959. [Julian Dowding].

WANTED BY THE BBC: HOLLY BLUE CATERPILLARS

Celastrina argiolus

The BBC Natural History Unit is currently making a 60min programme devoted to British Butterflies and would love to obtain Holly Blue caterpillars, either captive bred or collected from the wild that we could film pupating and emerging later this summer. If you can help please call 0117 974 7855, or email simon.bell.01@bbc.co.uk